A social worker and a chemist from the East Coast, a 90-year-old building in a tiny mountain settlement, and an idea gleaned from a poem.

It's a little surprising 50 years later that a successful restaurant emerged from these unconventional origins. Surprising that is, if you didn't know anything about Frank and Barbara Finn, a couple who took to the wide-open possibilities of the West with relish when they opened Gold Hill Inn in 1962.

The pair were a couple of adventurers who fell in love with Gold Hill after Frank, co-founder of the Boulder YMCA, took a job at a ranch there as a caretaker. The camp provided a free place to live for the couple and their children, albeit one without amenities, not even an outhouse.

"They answered an ad at the Trojan Ranch," says son Brian Finn, who with his brother, Chris, now runs the Gold Hill Inn. "They had never seen a pot belly stove."

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When the ranch gig ended, the Finns took over the Red Store on Main Street, which provided them with a view of their future business opportunity. They watched as prospective buyers paraded through the log buildings -- the nine-bedroom Bluebird Lodge and the Gold Hill Inn. All the while, the memory of a line from a poem by Eugene Field, Barbara had read in 1959, began to sprout like a potato in the cellar. "... he'd done a thousand things ... but somehow hadn't caught on, and drifted with the rest, he drifted for a fortune to the undeveloped west ... he opened up a café, and he run a table d'hote."

Barbara took inspiration not only from the spirit of the poem, but also its specific business model. She wanted to open a café with a multi-course menu and a fixed price -- a table d'hote. The idea works in 2012 just as it did in 1962. Currently, a six-course meal from a changing menu goes for $35 and a newly added three-course menu is available for $25 for those without mountain appetites.

The restaurant was something different, and customers liked it both for its unique location and building and for its menu, which was more varied and adventurous than the steak and potato joints of the era.

"It was a hit pretty much off the bat," Brian says, especially with people from the University of Colorado and the government labs. "It was a genuine place in Colorado, not too far from Boulder, where they could take clients to a rustic dinner in the mountains."

And so it is today, although there are more regulars than out-of-towners.

Bob Muckle, the mayor of Louisville, has been going to the restaurant since 1969.

"It was my grandfather's favorite place to go for his birthday," he says.

About 15 years ago, his family started going on Mother's Day, bringing a number of the extended clan for the occasion, sometimes as many as 25.

"It's a wonderful place to go with big fireplaces. They consistently provide a good meal in a great setting," he says.

The original logs, chinking and floors (the roof is reinforced by newer trusses) and the three stone fireplaces bespeak the restaurant's gold rush-era origins. The gingham check curtains frame windows that are opened in the warm summers, just as fires burn in the fireplaces in the fall. The restaurant is open from May through December, a schedule arrived at when Brian and Barbara still ran the restaurant. In the beginning, they attempted to stay open in the winter with only wood for heat at the time. After a disastrous dinner attended by the then-governor, in which a bus full of guests got stuck on Lick Skillet Road, forcing them to hike in through the snow, the Finns came up with the current schedule.

Once they closed the restaurant for the winter, the family started a new tradition. Every year, they gathered several months worth of homework from the teacher at the one-room school down the road, and loaded the family into the Volkswagen bus to spend the winter in Mexico.

Music was also an integral part of the business from the early days. In the beginning a jug band composed mostly of scientists and University of Colorado faculty played regularly. A bluegrass band called the Dillards, who performed on the "Andy Griffith Show," were also a mainstay. Today, music is featured on Friday nights and on Sundays, when an a la carte bar menu is served, and on other days, as well. The Finns also host murder mystery dinners in the Bluebird Lounge

Brian and Chris Finn grew up working in the restaurant.

"We all worked from a young age, washing dishes, cleaning the place, working our way up to server," Brian says.

Brian gravitated to the front of the house and Chris to the kitchen. Two other siblings still retain part ownership, but are not involved day-to-day in the running of the restaurant.

Chris takes much of his cooking philosophy from his mother. As many cooks of her era did, she used "Joy of Cooking" as her bible, modifying recipes as she thought appropriate. She also tapped into international cookbooks for inspiration, Chris says.

A favorite of hers still used today is lamb "venison," a venison recipe that Barbara adapted to leg of lamb. It features a long, tenderizing soak in buttermilk with cloves and tarragon for seasoning.

Suckling pigs were a popular item on the menu in the early days, and are being featured again this week as part of the anniversary celebration from Thursday through Sunday.

While they're not so difficult to find now, getting pigs for the restaurant in the early days was a bit more complicated. When the Finns couldn't find a reliable supplier, they decided to raise their own. Fortified with can-do spirit, they took the kids and the Volkwagen van to a livestock auction in Longmont, not really knowing what to expect. Flash forward a couple of hours and the parents, four kids and 15 piglets endured an interminable, squealing ride home up the mountain. They raised to piglets to proper weight in a barn out back.

Today, procuring food is a little less hands-on. Chris describes the current menu as "mountain gourmet." Like his mother, he favors international preparations that still have a familiar feel.

"We might have anything from Jamaican pork to Korean pork ... or even unsmoked ham with roasted apricot sauce. A lot of it comes down to my mood," he says.

Chris shops weekly, using a food service and traveling to stores to see the produce, which serves as inspiration for the menu. That makes the menu seasonal. Some recipes come from a cookbook his mother created, or variations thereof. Others are of his own creation. At the beginning of the season, he looks back over prep lists to refresh his memory.

"I just like lots of different kinds of foods," he says. "That helps."

Ken Tankersley, who lived in Boulder for 10 years but now lives in Castle Rock, describes the restaurant as "one of the best kept secrets."

He learned about it roughly 20 years ago when he was a waiter and has been going ever since.

"I took my wife there the night I proposed," he says.

Tankersley says it's worth the drive from Castle Rock.

"It's a destination location for us," he says. "I'm a big fan of dining that's an evening."

Brian Finn says he and his brother are inspired by their parents, who died several years ago, and their wild idea of opening a restaurant without any experience or preparation.

"They really are the essence of what this place is," he says. "We just try to carry on their craziness."

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